Compare software

Portainer vs Cockpit Podman: catalog facts
Portainer	Cockpit Podman
Freemium Community Edition is free and open source. Business Edition is a paid subscription, free…	Free Free and open source under the LGPL 2.1 licence.
Windows, Linux, Web, Self-hosted	Linux, Web, Self-hosted
One console for Docker, Swarm and Kubernetes across several hosts Deploys Compose stacks and Helm charts from the browser	Browser interface for Podman on a server Integrates with the existing Cockpit console
Role-based access control and several fleet features are Business Edition only The agent needs access to the Docker socket, which is effectively root on the host	Requires Cockpit to be installed on the server Podman only, not Docker
Self-hosted, Web application	Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License not stated	License: LGPL-2.1
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.